Some people still don’t know what is a blog? A blog (shortened from the phrase “weblog”) is known as many things—a digital magazine, diary, newscast, collector’s meeting place, a showcase for your art, information sharing, teaching hub, a place to learn and…well, almost anything you want it to be. A typical blog combines text, images, videos and links to relevant pages and media on the Web. Blog readers can leave comments and communicate with the author. In fact, dialogue and interaction are a popular part of a blog’s success.
Thank you so much for this helpful post! I have been researching how to make a successful blog for a month or so and have found many of your posts very helpful! It is my goal within the next year or so to have one up and running! I’m currently working more then full-time hours but live my job; just want more freetime. I think with some hard work I can make it possible.
Be professional. When you submit a résumé, don’t type it in ALL CAPS and please don’t avoid the caps lock like the plague. Know how to use it without looking incompetent. Write in complete sentences with proper grammar. Of course, there will be exceptions, but even with the exceptions, you must keep it professional. You’re building their view of you.
Getting into the groove of writing content for your blog is fairly easy. Once you’re there, you’re there. But writing for your email list is a big challenge. Some women go on scrapbooking weekends. Some men go off to hunt. When it’s my weekend to take off by myself, I pack up my computer and a few bottles of wine and head to my sister’s house to write auto responder emails.

If you aren’t part of an ad network then you are constantly searching for new companies to advertise on your site. This one was always a pain in the ass for me. I wanted to spend time making my site better, but if I ignored selling my ad space then I wouldn’t have money to continue to make my site better. You can join an ad network, but that means you are giving up a percentage of the revenue. Work hard to only get 50% of the money? Bleh.

My intention is to begin immediately with my new blog. I want to focus around the service industry more specifically about addiction. It is a huge epidemic in this country and I do not feel that there is enough information out there, real to life information for people to read. As a product of my own demons and at this stage in my life I feel that I have much to offer in this regard. I would just like a little feedback from you about the idea, and perhaps how you would go about laying something like that out online.
I’m trying to get going for the minimum cost in the first instance. So, my question; is it possible to have more than one blog (or niche) attached to a single website? I have been advised it will cost around £250 for a basic WordPress site (once you have domain, hosting, theme etc). I have done a lot of work with small businesses as an advisor and specialise in marketing. I’m considering offering online courses and e guides. however, I would also like to blog about my hobbies of walking and motor homing. It’s just where to start!
In-depth tutorials are great for getting links and social shares. However, they can also be a great way to earn money on your blog. There are a number of ways you can make this happen - include affiliate links for the products you use in your tutorial; promote your own products in the tutorial; write a tutorial to promote an advertiser's product (just be clear that it's a sponsored post), etc.
WordPress.org is a highly popular choice because you don’t have to know any coding to design a slick blog. 1 in 5 websites use WordPress. Note: WordPress.org is a full-service blog hosting site, but you have to register your domain name and get set up with web hosting first. Wordpress.com has limited features and provides you a .wordpress domain name for free, but you can’t put advertising or affiliate links on a wordpress.com blog.[16][17]
I guess, based on my computer abilities, that I knew that blogging wouldn’t be easy but I just wish someone had been a little more HONEST with me about what it would take. I also wish, that the first “how to start a blog tutorial” I ever used had held my hand throughout the process a little more. (I am a classic victim of the how to start a blog tutorials that ONLY take you through step one!)
What is your ”spin”? To set yourself apart from the crowd, you’ll need to do something different and interesting with your content. Will you have an interactive focus? Focus on bizarre day-to-day news events instead of celebrity dish? Whatever you choose to blog about, make sure that you have ways to approach it creatively and that you can consistently offer new, exciting content.
I can’t offer people a whole world of knowledge yet but what I can say is that if you have been spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere, press pause on your operations for a bit (not more than a week or two at most, doing nothing will also get you nowhere) and re-educate yourself with articles like this and re-work your tactics where necessary.
Of course, if you’re launching a blog for personal reasons and have no goals beyond the satisfaction of writing, these don’t impact you. However, if you’re trying to make money from blogging, it is very important to set realistic expectations of the work involved. Blogging for money is a form of business, which involves a few costs. Thankfully, blogging is relatively cheap compared to most other startups.
“This book is an excellent resource for bloggers, especially bloggers relatively new to blogging (i.e. have been blogging for 2 months to a year or so) and that are looking to take their blog to the next level. Ruth gives you clear advice on how to build a solid foundation for your blog, and she does an amazing job of emphasizing the importance of that foundation and it’s role in helping you make a profit down the road. For Ruth, it’s more about lasting upward momentum than getting rich quick. And I love that! Additionally, Ruth’s advice is valuable even if you are not looking to monetize your blog, since many of the same qualities that make a profitable blog are also ones that grow your readership generally. It quickly becomes apparent that Ruth is all about quality, honesty, action, and organization. I feel like I have a much clearer picture of what kinds of items need to be on my blogging to-do list, and after reading I felt empowered to actually get myself in gear and cross those items off my list.
Blogging is hard and what I find to be the hardest for me is constant writers block. Evey time I sit down at the computer to write the mind just goes blank. I wonder if that is just me or happens to others also. Or maybe it means that I am not a good communicator or maybe too much disciplined as I am pushing myself too much instead of letting the creativity come naturally. Just don know 🙁

The best avenue for making money from your blog is through email marketing, plain and simple. Hands down, this offers one of the quickest and surest strategies for earning an income through your blog. But before you get there, you need to sign up to an email marketing platform like Aweber, ConvertKit, MailChimp, Constant Contact, InfusionSoft or any other number of platforms that exist out there.

The one constant with trends is they do not last. They are always based on a new technique or technology and follow an interest cycle. Since human beings by their nature move on to something different, new and perceived as better (and usually ACTUALLY better), if you are attached to any one trend, you are doomed if you don’t adjust and keep up with the times.
We’re going to go through seven specific steps you can take to find your own path to success, but first, let’s take a look at a common path most successful blogs have taken. It starts with a problem to solve and a product or affiliate product to sell. Ideally, this product is designed to solve that problem. Next, these sites use their blogs to provide free, valuable, high-quality content and use things like SEO, social media, guest posts and even paid ads to drive traffic to their websites.
Facebook – Depending on your niche you can expect to pay about $1 per click to your blog, but there are many variables that can influence how much you will pay. Depending on the nature of your business this can provide some excellent ROI in terms of initial sales, but the main focus of this ad campaign is to get people to your blog. Wow them with your content and get them to opt-in to your email list for more updates.
I’m a bit confused…are you talking about using WordPress.com or WordPress.org when setting a blog? I heard not to use WordPress.com for a blog even though its free because the blog isn’t really “yours” and they can do what they want with it. Can you clarify the difference between the .com and .org and which one should be used in setting up a website and blog?
What does it mean to deliver value? Either your posts have to be extremely informative, in that they teach people how to do something useful, or they need to be entertaining or provide value in another format. Your posts also need to be engaging. Don’t expect people to spend a lot of time or even share any of your content if your posts don’t deliver value and they’re not engaging.
in my personal opinion, I believe affiliate marketing and blogging is by far the most simple way to put oneself in a position to make money online tested 24 hours a day but this is not a get rich quick overnight operation. In fact, people who dedicate themselves to making affiliate marketing and blogging full-time career left and work twice, thrice, and dozen times harder than the regular day job in order to make it work for them. Why? Because there’s no guarantees of earning one died in online marketing. This is possible with no guarantees of financial stability. But one can make themselves a future “side also millionaire,” if they believe in themselves and do the transformation business work of inspiration for desperation.
With personal finance software you can schedule automatic payments and transfers between all of your imported accounts. Automatic transfers will help to make sure you have the necessary funds in the right account to ensure all bills are paid on the appropriate date. Late fees are annoying and do nothing but cost you money. It’s time that you said goodbye to them once and for all.
We have good news because you are not the first person who tried to start a blog! (Shocker, we know!) In fact, we’ve gone through this process a few times ourselves, with a wide variety of failures and successes. That’s why we’re here to give you a roadmap detailing all the things you’ll need to know in order to start a blog with all the right ingredients to be successful. This is everything we wish we knew back when we first got started.
In the end, running a blog is one of those things that seems simple in itself, but the gap between just doing it and doing it to its fullest potential is actually huge. There’s just so many moving parts! There’s WordPress itself, writing content, editing, formatting, hosting, SEO, link building, social media, email lists, networking, and on and on and on.
Answer questions people interested in your niche are already asking. I sometimes check out the most popular questions about personal development on huge sites like Reddit and Quora. They can often give you a good idea of what questions people are really interested in finding answers for. And so you’ll find some really good topics for your next posts or podcasts.
The next step in starting a blog and eventually earning a healthy income, is to find a good domain name. Domain names are in high demand these days, and there are all sorts of new extensions available. However, I would recommend that you stick with the dot-com domain extension. If you can't find it through a regular search, try GoDaddy Auctions or another domain auctioneer.
Very well thought out and detailed. It’s seems like a great guide – easy to understand and follow , Word Press is a great recommendation. It’s easy to use.I am currently using WordPress for publishing blogs relating to mobile advertising . Another easy way out is, bloggers can also monetize their blogs by joining mobile ad networks & Earn more revenue through their Blogs.
Use a contextual ad service. Once your blog contains high quality content and has begun to attract an audience, you can make money using Google Adsense, WordAds, or any other contextual ad service. These automatically generate ads in the amount, size, and placement you specify, matching the ads chosen to the topics you write about. The more readers who click on the ads shown on your site, the more money the advertisers will pay you.

Direct Income – when I started making money from my blogs it was through ‘direct’ income streams. I put AdSense ads on my blog and promoted some products on Amazon as an affiliate and the more readers I had the more income began to trickle in (it really was a trickle at first). In time as my traffic grew this income grew and I was also able to experiment with other direct forms of income such as selling advertising directly to advertisers.

Although I do think conversions are the most important thing I can recall when I first started out one of my sites and I was starting to get regular daily traffic of around 10 uniques, and then I had one day that spiked to 200. That was a very encouraging day. Just seeing that traffic spike gave me confidence and a drive to work harder towards my next goal. I had not made any conversions yet, no money. However, seeing that my hard work was doing something was very encouraging.
Search for blogs that cover similar topics. Use a search engine and the search bar on blog hosting sites to find blogs that cover your topic or related topic. Read a few blog posts from the most popular ones, that show up high on the search ranking, have the most comments, or display a readership of 20,000 or more.[7] Get an idea for how much interest and competition there is.
That being said, while you shouldn’t expect to go full-time right away, blogging has in fact led to multi-million dollar companies. There is no guarantee in blogging, just like any other business endeavor. We share these stories with you so you can see what is possible. While you may never make millions, with the right research, time, effort, and timing, you can certainly earn a good income from blogging. To play it safe, we recommend blogging as a side business until you start seeing those returns.

Great article! I’ve been trying to set up a blog, but due to lack of funds I began on the WordPress free platform. Is it practical to keep developing content for that free blog and then transport it to a paid platform or should I begin from scratch on a paying site? And also, how much content should I have before I launch my blog? I’ve wanted it to be so perfect I’ve barely brought myself to write, even though I have so many wonderful posts trapped in my head, but they have to get out of there, I need to start! Thanks in advance!

Consistency and success go hand in hand. They have for centuries, from the publication schedules old newspapers used to the publication schedule you use today. For example you see it in TV with weekly episodes. You see it in magazines with monthly issues. You even see it in sporting events with weekly games. Some of the most successful blogs use a posting schedule.

Most bloggers actually welcome the advance to create great content for their platform. So you shouldn’t be shy in at least trying. There’s no harm in trying. If you succeed, then it will be a big win. If not, continue to network and add value on your own, and eventually, as you build it, they will most certainly come. Just don’t expect it to happen quickly or easily.

Great post Jamie! There’s so many posts about how to make a money blog and your one is by far the best. One thing I want to comment on is initially all people who start a new blog don’t know where to start. They just sign up to different affiliate money making programs thinking that they will become rich quickly. You and me both know that this is not the case. What they don’t know and need to understand is that blogging needs hard work and dedication. To keep on going when after 6 months they are still earning zero. Only after that one can think to be successful online.

Very well thought out and detailed. It’s seems like a great guide – easy to understand and follow , Word Press is a great recommendation. It’s easy to use.I am currently using WordPress for publishing blogs relating to mobile advertising . Another easy way out is, bloggers can also monetize their blogs by joining mobile ad networks & Earn more revenue through their Blogs.
I wanted to let you know that this evening is the first time I have came across your blog and as I have many others I read through it. However, I’m not sure what it is about your particular blog but for some reason I feel drawn to it. A lot of what you have blogged about sounds so much like myself. I have wanted to start my own blog for a while (3 years to be exact) but being the procrastinator that I am, not knowing where/how to start AND racking my brain for a domain name has prevented it. I too, have a passion for writing. I always have. All the way back to Elementary school. I have many, many ideas for my blog and have had to hand write everything as I think of it. My dilemma now is coming up with a domain name haha. I have a binder with “my blog” topics, “layout” etc. I literally am just steps away…if I can ever decide on a domain name. Thank you so much for the inspiration you give and the passion you put into your writing…Unlike some blogs where the content is just as original as the next one I click on after it. I only hope to become half the blogger you are. Thank you for sharing this, it has helped!!
This is where you'll select the best hosting plan (more details about hosting in the next section of this guide below, but hosting is the service that actually gets your blog hosted and keeps it live on the Internet). Personally, I highly recommend choosing the Choice Plus plan—because it comes with Domain Privacy, which will protect your personal information (your full name, email address, phone number and home address) from being published online. That means no spam/scam emails or phone calls.